@oliver: "<quote>
Texans, on the other hand, seem to take every possible opportunity
to remind themselves that they're in Texas.
You can even tell a little from the ad campaigns.  Oh, sure,
"Happy cows come from California", but it's a *quantitative*
thing  air conditioners advertise themselves as "tough as Texas",
the XX of Dos Equis has a Te...as around it, etc etc etc.
The silhouette of the state is ubiquitious (admittedly, it
is kind of elegant-looking).  The town square of Denton
has a "Texas Building".
I've danced with two Lauras who introduced themselves, as far
as I could tell, as Lara  [lara] to my ear, though some
might have heard [lAra].  My "Laura" is [lOra] (or perhaps [lOrV]).
This could be indicative of why I tend to say my "cot" is [kat] 
the thing is that my "caught" is distinguished from "cot" but is
clearly not [kOt]; it's farther forward and lower than "cot", but
hardly rounded at all, whereas my "Laura" vowel is rounded.
Maybe I need to use one of those [A.] or [A:] thingies; never did
figure out just what they meant.
Mike
who's been told he'll never really be a Texan"
    @harveynews: "On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 02:34:58 GMT, Mike Oliver wrote
-snip re: Texas is everywhere in Texas-
<quote>
Intriguing aesthetic judgement, that.
I always felt it was kind of blobby  too many right angles to be 
elegant.  (I associate "elegant" shapes with graceful curves rather 
than with right angles.)
Cheers, Harvey
Ottawa/Toronto/Edmonton for 30 years;
Southern England for the past 21 years.
(for e-mail, change harvey to whhvs)"
    @gguiri: "On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 08:29:40 +0100, Harvey Van Sickle
<email_address> wrought:
<quote>
To me it always looks like it was supposed to be Australia and they
forgot to stick on the anamorphic lens for Cinemascope.
***********
Ross Howard"
    @jonathanjordan: "news:GqV3b.229459$<email_address>
<quote>
wrote:
The unstressed final vowel is open enough to be called [a]?
Actually I once heard "tuna" pronounced with a final vowel which sounded to
me like [A.] (i.e. like my "cot" vowel), but that was in Leicester.
Whereas I do say [lO:r@] ("caught" vowel) but it still wouldn't rhyme with
"Cora", which would probably be [ko@r@], though I could also imagine
[kA.r@].  Compare "oral"/"aural"/"moral" with [o@], [O:] and [A.]
respectively.  I think for many Americans they would all rhyme.
Jonathan"
    @jonathanjordan: "news:<email_address>
<quote>
wrote
out
syllable.
What about after /r/, for example in "curl" or "Carl"?  I also seem to
have some diphthongisation in those, and a greater tendency towards
having no [r] sound than I usually do.
something
consonants
with
Length seems to be the main difference, yes.  I'll remember this as
another example for the next time an American claims that English doesn't
have vowel length distinctions.
you're
vowel
As far as I can tell, fairly neutral on both counts, so a sort of rounded
schwa.  I'm reluctant to write /@/ because I just don't feel [O"] to be
the same vowel as [@], any more than I consider [a], [E], [A.] or [U] to
be the same as [@].  The weak form of "but" feels different from the
strong form just as those of "that" or "of" do.  So I go along with RP
and write /V/, even though it's even more phonetically inappropriate for
me than it is for RP.
(NB I have [A.] in stressed "of", "was", "what".)
Jonathan"
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